


Hot Lead, Tempered Steel

by Dat_Patriot



Series: Hot Lead, Tempered Steel [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Assassins, Iruka-centric, M/M, Yakuza, kakairu - Freeform, modern!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 08:46:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3971485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dat_Patriot/pseuds/Dat_Patriot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iruka gets some unwanted visitors in his classroom after school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hot Lead, Tempered Steel

Iruka leaned against his desk at the front of the classroom while his twenty-odd charges gathered their belongings and tidied up. His room had been decorated like a winter wonderland for the season. Colored paper chains draped along the walls and each of his young students’ lockers had a self-decorated gingerbread person with their name on it.

As such, it was the last day of class before winter break, and Iruka couldn’t wait to get his hyperactive students back into their parents’ hands. Eager to leave, the little hellions sat in their desks with backpacks and parkas on, practically vibrating with anticipation.

Iruka patted the stack of workbooks on the desk by his hip, “Don’t forget to put your workbooks here before you leave! I don’t want to have to chase you down over the break, you hear me?”

A few more workbooks made it onto the pile. Of course.

The end of school bell chimed and the children dashed out of their seats and flooded into the hallways, a smattering of “Bye Iruka-sensei!” rose above the din.

“Have a fun break, kids.” Iruka called to their retreating backs. Within seconds the room was cleared and the last trailing fifth-grader stumbled out.

Blissful silence.

Iruka took a moment to drink it in.

Shaking himself out of his stupor, Iruka rounded the desk and stuffed the stack of workbooks into his satchel to take home. He turned to the whiteboard, covered in festive notes and good wishes from his students, and began wiping it down, eager to finish his cleaning and head home.

“This is a nice classroom you’ve got here.” A deep voice sounded from the classroom door, startling the teacher into stillness. “It’s very… festive.”

Iruka sucked in a breath and set down the eraser. He turned, facing a hulking mass of a man who seemed to take up the entire doorway. He wore a dark suit that seemed too small on the shoulders, his meaty hands half-tucked into the pockets of matching trousers. He might have passed for a usual visitor if not for the gnarling scar that stretched across his face that disappeared into greased-back hair.

Holding himself stiffly, Iruka asked, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I believe you can,” the man said unexpectedly, taking a few steps forward into the room. He reached into his jacket pocket and slipped out a business card. He held it out to the teacher between two fingers. With a nervous gulp, Iruka walked out from behind the safety of his desk and plucked the card from the man’s fingers. His eyes flitted from the slip and back to the towering man in front of him. “My name is Hagewashi. My employer sent me to contact you.”

“Your employer…” Iruka fiddled with the card for a moment. It was completely black except for the printed name in the center. The teacher didn’t like the sound of some mysterious employer with rhinoceros thugs. He looked back up, “I’m not sure what he could want with me.”

“I have been informed that you have a very special set of skills that could prove... valuable to our cause.” Hagewashi replied, obviously tip-toeing around giving any actual information.

“If you count slaving over ungraded workbooks and watching twenty-six hellions all day a valuable skill set, then I’m your guy.” Iruka chuckled nervously.

Hagewashi scoffed, a rough, harsh sound, “Hardly.”

This was not going well. Iruka looked to the door of the room just as another head poked around the corner. This man was a lot smaller and almost comically thin with a suit that looked too large on him. He slipped inside, and to Iruka’s dismay, shut the door behind him.

“Hey Hage-san, did you get the guy to come yet?” The man asked, shuffling into the room with his hands deep in his pockets. Iruka watched them carefully. It was obvious that he was in the company of some yakuza thugs. Iruka glanced at the clock. It was almost four… If he could stall them until four-thirty, the janitor might be able to get help when he came to collect the trash.

“You will call me Hagewashi, Gesshirui, and I am working on it.” Hagewashi barked, turning to his companion. Iruka took the opportunity to slide closer to his desk. If he could get to his phone…

“Ah, right. Sorry Hagewashi.” The smaller man simpered, his hands now in front of his face and a nervous sweat quickly forming on his brow.

“I—I’m sorry, who are you?” Iruka asked, trying to sound more in control than he felt. He needed to stall.

“Oh, name’s Gesshirui. Call me Gesshi.” He held out his hand in a small wave.

Iruka cracked a small smile at the childish gesture, but his eyes remained on the men’s hands. “Nice to meet you, Gesshi.”

Hagewashi growled, “Enough of this! My employer has sent me here to contact you, Umino Iruka, to encourage you to consider doing a job for him.”

“I don’t know what kind of job he could have me do…” Iruka trailed off. “Does he have any kids for me to tutor, or—?”

“Hage-san, are you sure we have the right guy?” Gesshirui interrupted him, looking more nervous by the minute. “He doesn’t seem to know anything.”

“That’s because he’s good.” Hagewashi sneered, clearly losing patience. He shifted slightly, his stance wider and his hands open in a way that sent off warning bells through the teacher’s head. Fighting stance. “The boss told me not to trust this man, and I’m not stupid enough to believe that he has no idea what I’m talking about.” He half-turned to his companion, his eyes still trained on the scarred teacher standing nervously by the desk. “Umino Iruka is a trained mercenary who had been working for the Suijouki family up until recently. Of course, the Suijouki family is made up of crack-shits who won’t even open their windows to filter their stink. They never saw it coming when he turned on them for a higher bid. He was merciless, cunning, and damn-well flawless in their execution. It was a thing of beauty.” Hagewashi’s words were colored with a begrudging respect that sent a harsh shiver down Iruka’s spine.

With only the slightest shift, the large man instantly withdrew a handgun from within the folds of his jacket, the barrel directed at the scar that bridged the teacher’s nose. Iruka stiffened with a small yelp. “This man is a trained killer, and the boss wants someone dead. I’m not above threatening a schoolteacher to get what the boss wants done.”

Iruka raised his hands higher, eyes flitting around the room, “Okay, now I’m sure you’ve got the wrong guy! Put that away, dammit, this is a school!” His voice cracked, his hands shook.

Hagewashi smirked at the cowering display, “If you’re so worried about it, why don’t you take it from me?”

Silence filled the space for what could have been seconds or centuries. Iruka quickly assessed the situation—two men, one definitely armed, the other likely not a threat unless he was a nervous shooter. He was too far away to disarm Hagewashi, but his nervous pleading seemed to have given him some time. Iruka glanced up at the clock, still another ten or so minutes until anyone would likely come by. Shit! But at least the kids were safe. If this guy had threatened any of his kids…

Taking a deep breath, Iruka spoke as steadily as he could, “My name is Umino Iruka. I am twenty-nine years old, I have been teaching for—“

The giant man erupted, “Shut up!” The click of the safety echoed through the room. Iruka felt almost painfully aware of the childish decorations and the small desks of his classroom that surrounded him. “None of that matters, Umino!” Hagewashi boomed, his gun still trained on Iruka’s scar. “You can drop the act by the count of three or I will shoot, consequences be damned!”

“No! Shit, don’t shoot! My name is Umino Iruka, I’m a teacher of 5th grade—!” Iruka pleaded, not caring at all if he was going to be begging for his life in his own classroom.

“One!” Hagewashi shouted.

“Hey, Hage-san,” Gesshirui piped up from where he was pressed against the doorframe, eyes as wide and terrified as the teacher’s. “I don’t think that’s such a good—”

“Shut up!” Hagewashi all but roared, spittle flying from his lips and his eyes looking far too manic. “Two!”

Iruka felt hot tears slide down his cheeks. “Please, please! I’m not who you think I am!” His hands trembled, his knees were going to rubber.

 _Oh dear God_ , he thought. _I’m going to die._

“Three!”

_Bang!_

The shot was deafening in the small room. Papers fluttered, Gesshirui yelped from where he cowered. The clock ticked on.

Hagewashi gave a lung-tearing groan and rocked forward, his mass rattling the room as dead weight his linoleum. A freshly scorched hole seeping crimson blood was displayed grotesquely from between his shoulder blades. He was still.

Gesshirui looked up from his fallen companion to see the teacher, leaning casually against the desk, a sleek gun twirling around his finger. “What…” The man stuttered, scrambling backwards only to hit the closed door behind him. Shit! “How did— What did you— I thought you weren’t--!!”

Iruka chuckled at the panicking man, “What? Did you think I would let two low-grade thugs come onto my turf and rough me up?” He gave a wicked smirk that crinkled the scar across his cheeks, “Your boss told him right. I am skilled, cunning, merciless...” Iruka’s smile dropped as he pointed the gun right between the man’s eyes, “and I don’t leave witnesses.”

“No--!”

_Bang!_

The second body slumped to the ground.

Iruka breathed a sigh of relief. He moved from where he was propped against the desk and stretched bodily up towards the ceiling. Acting panicky was fun but it definitely strained the body! He turned his neck, to loosen the muscles only to feel the snag of hair taught on his scalp. “Ugh, stupid hair…” The teacher quickly pulled out his hair tie and turned to set his gun on the desk. He quickly scraped together the fallen strands to put it back in order when a whistle sounded behind him.

“Well, you sure did a number on these two.” A deep voice commented, sounding far too amused to be an average shmuck coming across two dead bodies in a fifth-grade classroom.

Smiling, Iruka turned to see the silver-haired man he knew like the back of his hand leaning against the inside of the closed door, arms crossed casually and eyes alight.

“They threatened me on my turf, Kakashi,” Iruka commented as he pushed the gun into the waistband at his back. He sauntered over to the man. “Nobody gets away with threatening me where I teach my kids.”

Kakashi hummed in agreement as Iruka stopped in front of him, “I don’t envy the poor bastard who thinks to threaten your students.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you, Hound-sama?” Iruka teased. Kakashi’s head fell onto Iruka’s shoulder at the embarrassing memory. He had been hired by some no-name family to dispose of Iruka after the other had eliminated an entire yakuza family. Breaking into his apartment had been so easy that he had been cocky. Cocky enough to not notice the gun trained on him from across the room for a full ten seconds.

Their stand-off lasted that entire evening and into the next morning, with Kakashi decked completely in his assassin’s gear and iconic Hound mask and threatening Iruka in any way he could imagine. The tanned man had scoffed at him in all his shirtless, pajama-clad glory, not wary at all that a trained mercenary was staring at him across his living room.

Until Kakashi noticed the workbooks on the kitchen table and made a remark about his students.

Kakashi was lucky Iruka hadn’t damaged his left eye completely when he struck out with his concealed blade. It was likely an intentional move, looking back on it.

He was even kind enough to patch him up after making Kakashi promise to never threaten anything so stupid in his entire short-lived, trigger-happy life again.

Kakashi fancied himself rather fond of the scarred assassin after that.

Several years later the two split ties from all of the families, adopting new lives to break out of their formerly bloody lifestyle. Iruka later told Kakashi that the Suijouki family had been his last job before he took to the classroom, and Kakashi couldn’t help but smile at the irony of a trained killer yelling at kids to turn in homework.

Kakashi shook his head at the memory before grabbing Iruka by the hips and pulling him closer, touching their noses together, bringing his lips to Iruka’s enticing scar. “You sure taught me a lesson.”

“I’m a teacher,” Iruka laughed, wiping a stray drop of blood from his cheek. “That’s my job.”

 

=x END x=

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I originally wrote this as a play [which is why it's so dialogue based] for a creative writing class, but I wanted it to be about Iruka so here it is. Not much Kakashi/Iruka [sorry] but I might make a "Part II" detailing their first meeting...
> 
> Hagewashi = vulture  
> Gesshirui = rodent(s)
> 
> [UPDATE] There will be a sequel and a prequel.
> 
> //check my ao3 profile for regular fic progress updates~


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